Letter of the Day: Losing touch

1/22/2012: T1:

PC: Logan Pomi, 8, practices her cursive on an interactive board during class at Union Elementary School located 4 miles west of Petaluma, California on Wednesday, January 18, 2012. Logan Pomi and her brother, Derrick, 10, are the fourth generation of children in thier family to attend the school. (BETH SCHLANKER/ The Press Democrat)

September 11, 2013, 3:32PM

09/11/2013

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EDITOR: The curse on cursive: "Cursive might be one skill that can be painlessly dropped to make way for new ones" ("Cursive not part of core," Sept. 6). Writing cursive is presented as a "romantic idea" that should be eliminated from the Common Core curriculum.

Yes, cursive helps children, especially boys, develop motor skills. But the main problem is this: Children who can't write cursive can't read it. The editorial neither mentions nor disputes this. What does that mean? It means that the new generation is cut off from the personal historical past of their families, personal letters and old documents needed to trace one's ancestry. It also cuts the new generation off from a requirement needed for research.

Cutting out cursive would leave our culture more unmoored than it already is. And here I thought I would write a letter objecting to the government, which distrusts its citizens so much it needs to spy on 300-plus million of us, and a leadership apparently willing to shoot missiles into Syria because Syria crossed a red line just as Serbia crossed a red line for Austria in 1914. But perhaps the loss of cursive is even a more tragic loss to the community we share with the past.